Page 31 of Everything She Does Is Magic

“It’s amazing. This whole town is. I’m obsessed with witchy stuff.”

“You’re certainly in the right place for that.”

“I really have to go,” Anya blurts out, cutting off this exchange of pleasantries. “Bye, Darcy. Thanks again.” She hurries out of the shop, leaving me with Julia and her silent boyfriend.

There is no way I can follow her now. That will let Julia know that Anya and I have something to discuss, and the less Julia knows about anything, the better.

Without Anya around, Julia’s whole demeanor changes. The friendly smile she’d had plastered on her face falls. “You know, right? About Anya?”

I hate the way she says this, so full of sneering judgment, as if I’d ever be a member of whatever Anya Doyle hate club she wants to form.

“Of course I do,” I say with confidence.

“Okay, good. Just be careful, then,” she warns. “She’ll liestraight to your face, over and over, and she won’t feel bad aboutit.”

I give her a tight smile. “Got it. Let me know if you need any help with the ceramics.”

“Okay, thanks.” She sits back down, dabbing off the fine-tipped brush she’d been using to do stripes on her witch figurine’s socks.

The thing is, Anyadoeslie. She lied to me just now, in the supply closet. She lied that first night she came here to the shop, and again when she fixed Maddie’s wings. I want to know why she’s done all that, why she never seems to tell me anything fully honest, but the last person I want to learn that information from is Julia.

I’m halfway to the front desk when Julia blurts out my name. I turn back, and she’s looking at me pleadingly as she says, “Whatever you do, don’t trust her.”

11 Days Until Halloween

14

Anya

It’s bad when even the sad girl music doesn’t cut it for me. Sometimes it’s too on the nose, and what I really need to listen to are the brightest, happiest songs I can find. Not because I dislike this kind of music. It’s that, when I’m really in my feelings, joy seems like the saddest emotion of all.

I have my headphones on, upbeat pop blaring loud enough to make me lose hearing as I do French extra credit to keep my mind occupied. A loud sound from outside cuts in just enough to make me pause.

It’s a car. Honking. Not once, not twice, butsixtimes in urgent succession. Aunt Cal’s sitting room has giant curtains that are always closed. They’re made of a heavy red fabric that might be as old as the house itself. I tug one back a fraction of an inch, holding my breath to avoid inhaling whatever volatile combination of dust and filth I’ve just kicked up.

There’s a black SUV parked in front of Cal’s house. The driver honks again, and it’s a siren song to my nervous system. Allthese years of hearing my family talk about threats to our magic—years of me tuning it out, thinking it’s some kind of vague thing they’ve made up to make us all feel self-important—now seems like the greatest oversight of my life.

Julia is here, and she has come to make a spectacle of the way I once failed her.

Or worse, she’s told Darcy everything, and Darcy herself is here to force answers out of me about why, when she moved so close to me, angling to have our lips meet, Iinvited her to a family dinnerinstead. The very dinner I’d already decided would never, under any circumstance, actually happen.

I’ll have to fight this attack with nothing but my French vocabulary and my heaviest glare. Lucky for me, the glare is surprisingly effective, according to multiple outside sources.

The honking continues—a long, persistent blare interrupted by occasional short beeps. I surrender to my fate, opening Cal’s front door a sliver.

Let me surrender in peace. No need to involve the entire street.

My head is no more than six inches out into the open when I hear “There she is!”

Pulling the door open all the way, I see…my mother?

Yes. My mother. Is here. Right now. Six days ahead of her already-early plan to show up.

“Goodness, you’ve gotten taller,” she says. “I hope Cal’s been measuring! It’s at least two inches!” She has her hand over her forehead to gaze up at me, standing beside the SUV—her SUV, I recognize now—as my dad ambles his way around to the trunk.

“Hello,” he says with a quick wave, greeting me more like a neighbor than a father. I appreciate his subdued reaction, because my body refuses to move any farther even as my braintells me to run into the woods and take refuge. It’s one thing to lie to my parents over the phone. Not easy, but manageable. In person, my mom’s brightness is so overwhelming that I can’t help but wither like the aster I burned on Fableview Boulevard.

I knew this moment would come, but I hoped I’d be more ready. I wanted to have a set plan for my nonwitch life.